I pulled the blanket around me and tucked it against my chest and up around my ears as we went outside the tent. Adam was still there sitting by the fire, and thankfully between the roaring flames and the quarter bottle of whiskey he drank, he didn’t seem very cold at all. I walked out and sat down next to him by the fire while Michael took some of the food from the pack and started to warm it up over the flames.

“Did you eat?” I asked Adam, trying to avoid having to explain why Michael and I couldn’t control ourselves in the tent and left him out here to freeze.

“Yeah,” he said pleasantly. “But I made sure to save you guys some.”

“Thanks,” I smiled.

I was a little shocked at how well he was taking it. I thought that at the very least there would be some sort of dig or sarcastic comment, or some anger and resentment about how he was out here in the cold while we were enjoying each other inside the warm tent. But there was nothing. He didn’t seem upset at all. He seemed buzzed, and amused.

After we ate, and after Adam had a few more swigs from the bottle, he said goodnight and went inside the tent to get warm and get sleep, while Michael and I stayed outside to sit by the fire together.

“This reminds me a little bit of being at the bonfire at the cabin,” he smiled as he held me closely.

“Agreed, except we had all of our fur blankets there,” I said. “And it wasn’t completely in the middle of nowhere.”

He laughed. “This isn’t nowhere. Look.”

Michael pointed up at the sky and I could barely make out some of the twinkling stars between the canopy of trees. It was, actually, extremely beautiful.

“I guess you’re right,” I said in awe as I breathed in the fresh air and tilted my head all the way back until it rested on his shoulder. “The stars are beautiful anywhere we are together, and the flames are just as strong here as they were at the cabin. The only thing that matters it the fire that burns between us.”

We sat together in silence and listened to the sounds of the forest and the sound of Adam snoring softly inside the tent.

“You seemed so sure the whole time that we weren’t siblings,” Michael said as he held me close to him. “How did you know?”

“I didn’t know,” I answered. “God, I wanted to believe that I knew it for sure, but I didn’t. I just couldn’t give power to the idea that we could never be together again. It tormented me every second, so I pushed the thoughts down and focused on the hope that it would get figured out. And—it did.”

I felt Michael’s chest sigh against my back.

“You are much stronger than I am, Lisette.”

I laughed. “Oh please, how can you even say that. I broke down in a hysterical fit of sobbing when Julian died. I ran away and left you all behind when my crazy aunt was after us. You literally held me over a rooftop with my life dangling at your fingertips and I was so consumed by you—even then, even when I thought that I hated you, that I would have let you throw me off that rooftop rather than try to pull away from you. I’m not strong at all.”

“You’re wrong,” he said. “You’re looking at all of that in the wrong way.”

“What do you mean?”

“You sobbed when Julian died like anyone who had just lost their best friend and lover would. But then, you carried on. That is strength. You didn’t run away to save yourself from your crazy aunt, you ran away to protect us. That is also strength. And I think that what happened on the rooftop all those months ago—I think that was probably the bravest thing of all of them.”

“How so? I dangled over the edge and waited for you to drop me. That’s a pretty skewed version of bravery,” I chuckled.

“No,” Michael said with seriousness in his voice. “You knew that I wouldn’t drop you. You could have walked away. You could have kicked me or fought against me. But instead, you chose to give yourself to me. You chose to stay, even though you were afraid. Isn’t that what strength and bravery are? Choosing to stay and face the thing that you are afraid of?”

I thought about what he said for a moment while I looked up at the night sky.

“I don’t really think that I actually had a choice,” I said after a few moments had passed.

“Of course you did,” he said. “I wouldn’t have actually fought you if you had tried to leave.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I said as I turned my head to look at him. “I didn’t have a choice even then because I couldn’t leave. You see, now that I actually look back and see all of it…I didn’t just choose you when I hinted at it in the letter that I left behind. I knew it was you, even that very first night on the rooftop. I’ve always known it was you.”

6

The next morning came early, and for some reason it felt even colder in the fresh daylight than it had the night before. I guess winter was giving us one more good kick in the teeth before relenting to the spring.

Michael, Adam, and I had all curled up together beneath the blanket in the tent and our body heat was plenty sufficient to keep us warm. But as soon as Adam unzipped the tent flap and we stepped out into the bitter air, the wind nipped at my cheeks and immediately burned my lungs with its icy bite.

“The temperature has dropped significantly,” Michael said as he pulled his coat around him tighter. “Even though we’re all pretty well prepared this time, I don’t think we can last more than another few days out here if the temperature continues to drop.”

“How close are we to the spot marked on the map?” I asked Adam as he unfolded the paper again and looked at it with a shiver that seemed to reach even the inside of his retinas.

“Well,” he said as he looked around, “if we’re where I think we are, and if the spot on the map is where I think it is, then we should only be a few more miles away. We should be able to reach it by midday.”

“And what happens if there’s nothing there when we get there?” I asked.

I wasn’t sure why I was feeling so defeated already, before we even reached our destination. I guess it was because we’d been down this path before (almost literally) and had come up empty-handed. I just didn’t want us to keep chasing our tails in circles. I wanted answers and I wanted to untangle this mess and get Rob back.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Michael said gently as he tried to reassure me, although I could tell by the lack of conviction in his voice that he had already been thinking the same thing too.

He reached over to take my hand in his (which was still frigid even with the gloves on), and then we packed up our stuff and headed in the direction leading to the mark on the map.

Even though the distance we walked today was shorter, and even though it was daytime, and the sun was peeking through the clouds and treetops, it was so cold that the trek felt as though every step took twice as much time and effort to accomplish.

“I can’t feel my toes anymore,” I said finally, after sucking it up and holding in my complaint for as long as I could.

The skin on my face was so chapped that it was also going numb, and it felt a little bit as if I didn’t even have a nose anymore. Adam and Michael looked every bit as miserable as I felt. Their faces were bright red and the stiffness with which they moved made it obvious that their muscles were fighting against the tightness of the dropping temperature.

“It’s only a little farther,” Adam said as he pushed on ahead.

I trudged behind him, admittedly leaning most of my weight against Michael’s arm as I struggled to pull my boots out of each footstep in the snow. Fortunately, Adam was right, and we reached the place that was marked on the map. But once we reached the spot, we didn’t find a “place” or a “thing” that would be a clue. Instead, we found a person.

The woman was an ex-partner of Rob’s on the police force in Charlotte, and she made quick work of telling us exactly who she was and why she was hiding out here. She had been hiding out in the small cave that was carved into the side of the mountain for days—ever since Rob hid her there.

“Please,” she said. “I know it all sounds unbelievable, but you have to at least hear me out. Come inside and I can show you everything. I have a tent inside the cavern, and it’s loads warmer in there than it is out here.”

“Then what were you doing out here?” Adam asked her.

I could see the look of suspicion rising in his eyes and lifting his brows as if they were buoys on the waves of doubt.

“I’ve been coming out here every day to wait and look for you,” she answered. “Rob assured me that you would come. Although, I do have to admit that I was beginning to get a little worried about how long it was taking. I’m starting to run out of supplies, and even inside the cave and tent it’s getting colder. Mostly I was just starting to get worried about being found.”

“But I thought you just said that you were waiting for us to find you,” I said in confusion.

I was starting to get a bit frustrated. We had made it to the spot on the map, but it seemed to be filled with even more questions instead of answers.

“I was,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for you guys to find me, but not the others.”